“Cowboy Carter” is the eighth album by the African-American pop singer. Stylistically, it goes far beyond black music traditions. There is a message associated with it.
As confident as Beyoncé sits in the saddle of a white horse, she handles the white country tradition with confidence.
AP
On the cover of her new album “Cowboy Carter,” Queen Beyoncé rides on a white horse, waving the American flag. Her Majesty wants to conquer a new realm: country music.
With the banjo sounds of “Texas Hold ‘Em” she immediately reached the top of the American country charts – as the first black artist. Nevertheless, the appropriation of old American folk music does not seem to have been easy for her. “Cowboy Carter” proves to be a weighty but also somewhat overloaded concept album – a puzzle of songs, song snippets, samples and quotes.
Beyoncé impresses with a few relaxed country titles like “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “Alligator Tears”. And with cover versions like Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” or “Blackbird” by the Beatles, she proves her flexibility. Their fusions of house or hip-hop with country are stimulating. The highlights are provided with borrowings from rap (“Spaghetti”) and rock’n’roll (“Ya Ya”). But country sets the tone on “Cowboy Carter.”
It’s hardly surprising that a few rednecks are now bothered by the fact that a black Amazon with a cowboy hat, boots and spurs is hitchhiking into their musical garden. Even the fans may ask themselves why the 42-year-old African-American is trying to make a name for herself in a genre that is actually considered typically white.
Is it following the historical trail that actually leads from country back to black music, or is it simply trying to open up a new audience and market segment? Both are true. Beyoncé is a savvy businesswoman who is always on the lookout for catchy beats. And she has previously relied on the musical relationship between blues and country. But with “Cowboy Carter” it goes much further. The programmatic nature of the new album becomes clear when you place it in the context of your career to date.
The artistic maturation process
The R’n’B singer from Texas never had to worry about her singing talent. Since she started out with the girl band Destiny’s Child in the late 1990s, she has been one of America’s most virtuosic voices. When it comes to coloratura and its rhythmic sophistication, it is admired or envied by everyone.
Beyoncé’s image and her artistic profile, however, initially seemed blurred. At first, critics sometimes missed charisma and passion. And while Beyoncé was allowed to shine as an aloof prodigy, Destiny’s Child’s more sociable colleagues Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland had to take care of the interaction with the fans.
Like her role model Michael Jackson, Beyoncé was pushed into a pop career at a very early age by her father Mathew Knowles, which immediately led to the stratosphere of success. So she remained a puppet of her parents for a long time. And when she launched her solo career a good two decades ago, it was marked by a delayed replacement. The singer first had to distance herself from her father in order to create space for her own artistic visions. In her new song “Daughter” she also addresses Mathew Knowles’ outbursts of violence – and she fears that he may have passed on his cold-bloodedness to her.
Destiny’s Child (Beyoncé, Michelle Williams, Kelly Rowland from left to right) together with Matthew Knowles.
Pam Francis / Hulton Archive
On her first solo albums, the singer drew on playful R’n’B à la Destiny’s Child. She now sang polyphonic passages in the studio herself. This is how the gospel-like exchange between Beyoncé solo and Beyoncé choir developed, which would shape her repertoire. In songs like “Work It Out”, “Freakum Dress” and “Déjà Vu” she indicated early on her desire for anarchic experiments and harsh sounds. At the same time, she repeatedly tried her hand at pleasant songs and slow tearjerkers.
The album “I am” showed that the singer was not yet entirely clear about her artistic identity. . . Sasha Fierce” (2008). Sasha Fierce was supposedly her alter ego, representing her braver side; The real name Beyoncé, on the other hand, seemed to belong to a shy young woman suffering from stage fright.
Hip hop to the rescue
Beyoncé’s music has always been rewarded with high sales figures and numerous awards (she now holds the record at the Grammys with 32 awards). Nevertheless, she was in danger of becoming bogged down in tawdry, trendy mainstream pop. But hip-hop came to the rescue.
On the one hand, she gained more independence from her authoritarian father through her liaison and later marriage with the hip-hop star Jay-Z. On the other hand, the hip-hop methods of sampling, crafting and mixing have proven to be a therapy against artistic stagnation. Alongside style-defining producers such as Kanye West and The-Dream, she experimented with multicolored sounds and rhythms. And she developed hypnotic tracks that remained pop but still surprised with formal risks, iridescent sounds and electrifying rhythms.
Beyoncé also tested the potential of her voice in the Beats laboratory. In mantra-like loops (“Single Ladies”) she uses command-like chants; In soul numbers (“Rocket”) she developed elegiac momentum. Meanwhile, Beyoncé’s singing varies in countless tones between a fiery chest voice, throaty anger, a relaxed, motherly sing-song and girlish tenderness in the treble. And although she once struggled for a tangible artistic individuality, her vocal variability increasingly proved to be an expression of a diverse, dazzling personality.
This became apparent at the latest on the album “Beyoncé” (2013). The artist brought together the entire avant-garde of hip-hop producers. She then filtered out the most original ideas from the collective musical brainstorming. Musically, the album looks like an erotic fugue. But it also addresses marital tensions and emancipation.
While Beyoncé had always encouraged her female fans to empower themselves with songs like “Independent Women,” “Yes” and “Run the World (Girls),” she now increasingly underpinned her position through explicit feminism. Two years later, she let the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speak in a sample on “Lemonade”: “Feminist: the person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.”
“Lemonade” was about feminism. The outstanding album also manifested Beyoncé’s sympathy for the “Black Lives Matter” movement. The song “Formation” discussed her African-American origins; In the video for the music, New Orleans, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, was shown as a symbol of African-American misery. Finally, Beyoncé also staged the song for her performance in the halftime show of the 2016 Super Bowl: as a gigantic, subversive black power parade.
The performance was typical of Beyoncé’s penchant for ritual musicality reminiscent of processions and parades. Their repertoire is interspersed with carnival rhythms, the second-line grooves characteristic of New Orleans and cheerleading beats. The step patterns and choreographies of these traditions give songs like “Formation” an expansive urgency. And it is all the easier to stage the musical ideas developed on the computer as ceremonial works of art in a concert or video clip.
America for everyone
The last stop in Beyoncé’s career so far was the album “Renaissance” in 2022. Inspired by the voguing and house culture of the 1980s, the singer revives early forms of queer music culture. The nod to the LGBTQ movement is not surprising.
On her artistic path, Beyoncé has followed her own influences in order to play through all female archetypes – from the majestic bitch to the tender mother to the wicked goddess. But in doing so, she became alert to various forms of social discrimination.
As an African-American woman, Beyoncé herself is confronted with diverse, so-called intersectional discrimination. But she never resigned herself to any kind of victimhood. What a surprise, you might think – she is one of the winners of American showbiz. Despite their material privileges, their quarrelsomeness and sovereignty are definitely recommended as a means against excessive identity ideals.
Beyoncé has a special feel for the ceremonial implementation of her songs: performance in February 2013 at the Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans.
Imago
With her multimedia pop, Beyoncé always highlights the positive and negative experiences of being a Black American. She complains about discrimination, but she doesn’t stop there. Rather, she trumps sexist dullness with her glamorously staged feminism. And she doesn’t just counter the racism of rednecks with furious Black Power. But also with country.
Beyoncé said that previous attempts at country (“Daddy Lessons”, 2016) were met with so much criticism in white America that she really wanted to break into this genre. With “Cowboy Carter” Beyoncé demonstrates that she does not want to be reduced to her role as a woman, as an African American and as an exponent of a minority. She fights for artistic freedom beyond restrictive categories. And about an unconditional American identity.
In the two songs “American Requiem” and “Amen,” which frame the new repertoire with gospel choirs, she dreams of overcoming the sins of the fathers in order to found America as a church that finally unites all Americans.